Gary Snyder

I went into the Maverick Bar In Farmington, New Mexico. And drank double shots of bourbon backed with beer. My long hair was tucked up under a cap I’d left the earring in the car. Two cowboys did horseplay by the pool tables, A waitress asked us where are you from? a country-and-western band began to play “We don’t smoke Marijuana in Muskokie” And with the next song, a couple began to dance. They held each other like in High School dances in the fifties; I recalled when I worked in the woods and the bars of Madras, Oregon. That short-haired joy and roughness— America—your stupidity. I could almost love you again. We left—onto the freeway shoulders— under the tough old stars— In the shadow of bluffs I came back to myself, To the real work, to “What is to be done.”

The sour smell, blue stain, water squirts out round the wedge, Lifting quarters of rounds covered with ants, "a living glove of ants upon my hand" the poll of the sledge a bit peened over so the wedge springs off and tumbles ringing like high-pitched bells into the complex duff of twigs poison oak, bark, sawdust, shards of logs, And the sweat drips down. Smell of crushed ants. The lean and heave on the peavey that breaks free the last of a bucked three-foot round, it lies flat on smashed oaklings— Wedge and sledge, peavey and maul, little axe, canteen, piggyback can of saw-mix gas and oil for the chain, knapsack of files and goggles and rags, All to gather the dead and the down. the young men throw splits on the piles bodies hardening, learning the pace and the smell of tools from this delve in the winter death-topple of elderly oak. Four cords.

Siwashing it out once in Siuslaw Forest I slept under   rhododendron All night   blossoms fell Shivering on   a sheet of cardboard Feet stuck   in my pack Hands deep   in my pockets Barely   able   to   sleep. I remembered   when we were in school Sleeping together   in a big warm bed We were   the youngest lovers When we broke up   we were still nineteen. Now our   friends are married You teach   school back east I dont mind   living this way Green hills   the long blue beach But sometimes   sleeping in the open I think back   when I had you. A spring night in Shokoku-ji Eight years ago this May We walked under cherry blossoms At night in an orchard in Oregon. All that I wanted then Is forgotten now, but you. Here in the night In a garden of the old capital I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao I remember your cool body Naked under a summer cotton dress. An autumn morning in Shokoku-ji Last night watching the Pleiades, Breath smoking in the moonlight, Bitter memory like vomit Choked my throat. I unrolled a sleeping bag On mats on the porch Under thick autumn stars. In dream you appeared (Three times in nine years) Wild, cold, and accusing. I woke shamed and angry: The pointless wars of the heart. Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter. The first time I have Ever seen them close. December at Yase You said, that October, In the tall dry grass by the orchard When you chose to be free, “Again someday, maybe ten years.” After college I saw you One time. You were strange. And I was obsessed with a plan. Now ten years and more have Gone by: I’ve always known where you were— I might have gone to you Hoping to win your love back. You still are single. I didn’t. I thought I must make it alone. I Have done that. Only in dream, like this dawn, Does the grave, awed intensity Of our young love Return to my mind, to my flesh. We had what the others All crave and seek for; We left it behind at nineteen. I feel ancient, as though I had Lived many lives. And may never now know If I am a fool Or have done what my karma demands.

Hammering a dent out of a bucket a woodpecker answers from the woods

O Wave God      who broke through me today Sea Bream massive pink and silver cool swimming down with me watching staying away from the spear Volcano belly Keeper who lifted this island for our own beaded bodies adornment and sprinkles us all with his laugh— ash in the eve mist, or smoke, on the bare high limits— underwater lava flows easing to coral holes filled with striped feeding swimmers O Sky Gods      cartwheeling out of   Pacific turning rainsqualls over like lids on us then shine on our sodden— (scanned out a rainbow today at the cow drinking trough sluicing off LAKHS of crystal Buddha Fields right on the hair of the arm!) Who wavers right now in the bamboo: a half-gone waning moon. drank down a bowlful of shochu in praise of Antares gazing far up the lanes of Sagittarius richest stream of our sky— a cup to the center of the galaxy! and let the eyes stray right-angling the pitch of the Milky Way: horse-heads   rings clouds      too distant to be slide free. on the crest of the wave. Each night O Earth Mother I have wrappt my hand over the jut of your cobra-hood sleeping; left my ear All night long by your mouth. O   All Gods   tides   capes   currents Flows and spirals of pool and powers— As we hoe the field let sweet potato grow. And as sit us all down when we may To consider the Dharma bring with a flower and a glimmer. Let us all sleep in peace    together. Bless Masa and me as we marry at new moon         on the crater This summer. VIII 40067

Washing Kai in the sauna, The kerosene lantern set on a box outside the ground-level window, Lights up the edge of the iron stove and the washtub down on the slab Steaming air and crackle of waterdrops brushed by on the pile of rocks on top He stands in warm water Soap all over the smooth of his thigh and stomach “Gary don’t soap my hair!” —his eye-sting fear— the soapy hand feeling through and around the globes and curves of his body up in the crotch, And washing-tickling out the scrotum, little anus, his penis curving up and getting hard as I pull back skin and try to wash it Laughing and jumping, flinging arms around, I squat all naked too, is this our body? Sweating and panting in the stove-steam hot-stone cedar-planking wooden bucket water-splashing kerosene lantern-flicker wind-in-the-pines-out sierra forest ridges night— Masa comes in, letting fresh cool air sweep down from the door a deep sweet breath And she tips him over gripping neatly, one knee down her hair falling hiding one whole side of shoulder, breast, and belly, Washes deftly Kai’s head-hair as he gets mad and yells— The body of my lady, the winding valley spine, the space between the thighs I reach through, cup her curving vulva arch and hold it from behind, a soapy tickle                a hand of grail The gates of Awe That open back a turning double-mirror world of wombs in wombs, in rings, that start in music, is this our body? The hidden place of seed The veins net flow across the ribs, that gathers milk and peaks up in a nipple—fits our mouth— The sucking milk from this our body sends through jolts of light; the son, the father, sharing mother’s joy That brings a softness to the flower of the awesome open curling lotus gate I cup and kiss As Kai laughs at his mother’s breast he now is weaned from, we wash each other, this our body Kai’s little scrotum up close to his groin, the seed still tucked away, that moved from us to him In flows that lifted with the same joys forces as his nursing Masa later, playing with her breast, Or me within her, Or him emerging, this is our body: Clean, and rinsed, and sweating more, we stretch out on the redwood benches hearts all beating Quiet to the simmer of the stove, the scent of cedar And then turn over, murmuring gossip of the grasses, talking firewood, Wondering how Gen’s napping, how to bring him in soon wash him too— These boys who love their mother who loves men, who passes on her sons to other women; The cloud across the sky. The windy pines. the trickle gurgle in the swampy meadow this is our body. Fire inside and boiling water on the stove We sigh and slide ourselves down from the benches wrap the babies, step outside, black night & all the stars. Pour cold water on the back and thighs Go in the house—stand steaming by the center fire Kai scampers on the sheepskin Gen standing hanging on and shouting, “Bao! bao! bao! bao! bao!” This is our body. Drawn up crosslegged by the flames drinking icy water hugging babies, kissing bellies, Laughing on the Great Earth Come out from the bath.

One afternoon the last week in April Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet One-half turn and it sticks in a stump. He recalls the hatchet-head Without a handle, in the shop And go gets it, and wants it for his own. A broken-off axe handle behind the door Is long enough for a hatchet, We cut it to length and take it With the hatchet head And working hatchet, to the wood block. There I begin to shape the old handle With the hatchet, and the phrase First learned from Ezra Pound Rings in my ears! "When making an axe handle the pattern is not far off." And I say this to Kai "Look: We'll shape the handle By checking the handle Of the axe we cut with—" And he sees. And I hear it again: It's in Lu Ji's Wên Fu, fourth century A.D. "Essay on Literature"-—in the Preface: "In making the handle Of an axe By cutting wood with an axe The model is indeed near at hand." My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen Translated that and taught it years ago And I see: Pound was an axe, Chen was an axe, I am an axe And my son a handle, soon To be shaping again, model And tool, craft of culture, How we go on.

We finished clearing the last Section of trail by noon, High on the ridge-side Two thousand feet above the creek Reached the pass, went on Beyond the white pine groves, Granite shoulders, to a small Green meadow watered by the snow, Edged with Aspen—sun Straight high and blazing But the air was cool. Ate a cold fried trout in the Trembling shadows. I spied A glitter, and found a flake Black volcanic glass—obsidian— By a flower. Hands and knees Pushing the Bear grass, thousands Of arrowhead leavings over a Hundred yards. Not one good Head, just razor flakes On a hill snowed all but summer, A land of fat summer deer, They came to camp. On their Own trails. I followed my own Trail here. Picked up the cold-drill, Pick, singlejack, and sack Of dynamite. Ten thousand years.